14, 253 
Fesruary 8, 1919 Vou. VI, pp. 95-98 
PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
NEW ENGLAND ZOOLOGICAL CLUB 
NOTES ON SOUTH AMERICAN SHORT-EARED 
OWLS. 
BY OUTRAM BANGS. 
At my request, Dr. Leonard C. Sanford has kindly lent me 
for study the short-eared owls collected by R. H. Beck in the 
Falkland Islands and Mas-a-Tierra Island, and Dr. F. M. Chap- 
man has put into my hands the entire series from South America 
belonging to the American Museum of Natural History. These, 
combined with the material in the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology, form the basis of the following notes. 
It has been the almost universal custom of ornithologists to 
give the American range of the short-eared owl as ‘‘ North and 
South *America, from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to Pata- 
gonia,’’— or in words to that effect. This is misleading, and not 
entirely correct. I find no record for the short-eared owl from 
anywhere in southern Central America, nor in the vast forested 
regions of northern South America. Even on migration North 
American birds range south only about as far as Guatemala and 
Cuba and occasionally other West Indian Islands (there is one 
skin from St. Bartholomew Island in the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoédlogy). In South America, except for the very distinct 
local forms in the more northern parts of the country, of which 
